THE UNKNOWN HANDS (EPISODE SEVEN)

STORY SERIES

THE UNKNOWN HANDS

(EPISODE SEVEN)

….Would show up and would receive prompt attention from either one of the players or those standing by.

In those days, it was common to find the man coming to my father almost at the end of all harvesting seasons looking depressed and forsaken, to complain about his poor yield. This

yield, as a matter of fact, were usually so poor that he could not even feed members of his family with it let alone sell to others. Throughout those periods, he relied on my father for almost everything. In fact, at a time, his children, Bolaji, Aina, Irewole and Ajeniya were put in my father’s care.

I was very happy at the time for having people to play with especially Bola and Irewole who were of my sex. For that moment, I stopped going elsewhere for the moon-games and others were even coming to join us for the same reason. It was this commitment to friendship that made my father to later portion out his own land, giving his friend a large part of it, especially when his crops got burnt and was left with virtually no place to farm. It was a real trying period for him and he was left with no option than to place his children under my father’s care while he was still thinking out a way of survival out of the wood. The situation later got worse so much so that he was deserted by his two wives who went in search of greener pastures elsewhere. At that time, no one knew it was just a punishment for a wicked man. Everyone was sympathetic with his plight even though none, except my father, was ready to proffer any solution to his problems. It was at that moment that he was compelled to take to my father’s advice of taking on a portion land that used to belong to my father, thereby leaving his own land that had brought him only untold sorrows.

My father’s noble nature and generosity however backfired as things later turned out. The man had barely settled on the portion of land he was given when he started asking for more. He had his eyes on my father’s Cocoa and Kolanut plantations and without mincing words, asked for part of them which he was denied. That was the cause of their quarrel. He took his children away to an unknown abode while he also evacuated the portion given him. For more than two planting seasons, nobody heard anything about him. My father only became a bit suspicious when some people later started to raid our farm, an event we had never experienced before. It was a problem that developed all too suddenly for my father to handle. Shortly after that, my father became ill and suffered from a mysterious disease and within just a few days his appearance had changed as he now looked like someone who had been sick for years. The work on the farm had.. To be continued on Tuesday.

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